how does windows backup work?

[Frankie²]

ive been trying to manage my computer space better, and windows backup uses way more than my primary harddrive (primary harddrive usage is around 200GB, backup drive is 400GB)
i have it set up to only keep the latest backup
im really confused how windows goes about this

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[Starzy]

ive been trying to manage my computer space better, and windows backup uses way more than my primary harddrive (primary harddrive usage is around 200GB, backup drive is 400GB)
i have it set up to only keep the latest backup
im really confused how windows goes about this

Trust me i'm a professional, it means satan is trapped in your hard drive, you must destroy it immediately.

All jokes aside, i'm pretty sure windows backup holds your whole windows copy, and every variable on your hard drive, if you know about zeroing harddrives then you'll know what I mean by variable.

[matthewbim11]

Hey we just covered backups in my computer class last week.
A FULL (you have to choose to save 100% backup in options) will make a copy of your entire harddrive and everything that's on it.

You can set a "full" backup to do only Windows files and documents (i.e not backing up 100 gigs worth of games from steam).

The rasin your backup HDD is more populated than your main drive is because you most likely did not choose "Only keep previous backup" option. There could be other factors, like saving restore points to your backup drive or manually saving files there, but points are really small in size and you would know if you put any files on there yourself.

I forget what this type of setting is called, but you can set it up to do a full backup on Friday, and then only backup changed files every day until the next Friday. This is more failsafe then doing a single full backup every week, and will improve backup speeds (not on Fridays with full backups).

TL;DR:
No way a single backup is more than your actual drive, operator error.